


Capital Punishment

by Lifeoflemoon



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Capital AU, Coffee Shops, Dorks, First Meetings, Government Conspiracy, History, London, Original Character(s), Politics, Satire, Washington D.C., capitals are people, countries are secrets, slight romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 13:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lifeoflemoon/pseuds/Lifeoflemoon
Summary: There shouldn't be anything in the country that America doesn't know about. There shouldn't be, right? So how did he miss the meeting of his own capital?Perhaps 1814?That was England's fault though. Wasn't it? And shouldn't England know when London writes a book about the countries?Perhaps.All Daniel did was read a book. And live for 200 some years. And work at Starbucks. Too bad the government won't let him look into it, this America guy sounds pretty cool. If only these guys would leave him alone.This is the story of two countries and two capitals who accidentally discover a government conspiracy. Oops.





	Capital Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea that I started on fanfiction, due to my frustration with the American government. It is purely for learning how to write and testing my creativity, so I test out all kinds of writing skills to see how I can improve. I shall post as I see fit, yet I shall see it to the end. All experiments deserve a conclusion. All comments and questions are welcome, as well as ideas. (Also I am a major shipper of UKUS, so I'm slippin a little in there. Lemme know if y'all got any good recommendations.)

Daniel Christopher Washington didn’t feel old. At least not yet, but he had already been through 200 some years and he figured he should at least be having back pain. But for some reason or another, he still couldn’t even buy cigarettes. Which wasn’t a bad thing, Daniel hated drugs and was always looking to make sure that people followed the laws and the FDA. But this meant that physically, he was not any older than 17 years.

  
Daniel was born 1814 in Washington D.C.

  
He doesn’t remember the beginning, but from what he has read in the capital’s archives, it was like he was born out of the ashes of the razed grounds. Found by rebuilders, he was given to a nearby family and a politician by the name of Samuel Smith who gave him the name Daniel Christopher. Word soon spread of the ashes baby and Daniel was given to the capital, declared to be the symbolic child of the rebirth of America’s city.

  
If only they knew just how spot on they were…

  
But they must have known that he was special, Daniel figured, when his growth corresponded with the building of Washington. They must have known something, when they gave him the last name Washington, even though he had no connected relation to the first president of the United States. Those senators and house representatives must have known something, when he was declared a national secret 40 years later. Of course, by this time he had known something, when he should be 40 years old and not somewhere around 12 years.

  
He didn’t know what to do, not when he’s 12 and has everything he has ever wanted and needed. He has food, shelter, a set of wooden horses to play with when he’s particularly bored, and he could just about ask for anything and they would provide it for him. But he wasn’t really allowed to be free. Ironic, right? In the United States of America, a country founded upon the basis of freedom. He was forbidden, by an act of Congress, to leave or travel outside of the capital. He was to be forever trapped with the company of old white men.

  
And by 1860, those men started to argue, and young Daniel was scared. He didn’t want those men to fight. Couldn’t they just work out another compromise? That man Henry Clay was really good at it…

  
Daniel was restless from 10 years of entrapment, and he was feeling the tension of congresses arguments, like a child watching his parents fight for a divorce. He had to run, away from those violent arguments and into the freedom that he’d been craving. So he left, just as Congress seemed to be discussing custody.  
West. That’s where everyone was going. A destiny that everyone was fulfilling. And Daniel wanted to be part of it. A wild dream of the Wild West for a wild 12-year-old pulled him into a wild adventure away from the suffocation at home.

  
He brought a knife and a bar of gold, and caught caravan to Texas, where the pioneers around him taught him how to survive on the road. He would have gone farther if he hadn’t had found a friend. Daniel lost his knife and in his search, he enlisted the help of a nearby boy who had been searching for crickets, and together that had succeeded in forgetting about the knife altogether to play ball with a rolled up sock. Young Andrew Harrison was somewhere around Daniel’s age, and in return for playing with him, he gave Daniel his own knife and a family. For the next couple of years, the Harrison family welcomed Daniel onto their ranch where he learned to herd cattle on a stallion and shoot squirrels off of fence posts. Both of which he was quite good at.

  
On one of those days at the Harrison ranch he had gotten his first nickname. Danny. Or Dead-eye Danny when he picked up a rifle, and he never felt so at home. For a while.

  
For the first time since he could remember, he felt as if he didn’t have to represent anybody or follow congress around like a lost puppy. He was free. But he was also homesick. There was some kind of pull, a thread connecting him back the capital, and he knew that one day he would have to return.

  
Until then, Danny “grew up” with Andrew, or Andy, and celebrated each birthday, and each holiday with the Harrison family. He had a brother, a mother, and a father that wasn’t provided for him in Washington, and he wanted to remember what it feels like to have a family for the rest of his life. He wanted to remember when Andy taught him how to ride a horse, he wanted to remember when Mr. Harrison taught him how to skin a snake, and he wanted to remember when Mrs. Harrison taught him how to bake a killer apple pie. At that point, Danny still suspected that he would die one day, and he wanted to live to the fullest before he returned to permanent house arrest in Washington.

  
On Andy’s 18th birthday, Danny decided his time was up. The Harrison’s, as happy with Danny as they were, knew that Danny wasn’t growing as a normal boy should and they were starting to look for ways to accommodate for him. Danny couldn’t do that to them. He had spent 6 good years, Andy was now considered a man, and Danny was now approximately 13. They had gone too far in age, and now he didn’t want them to work so hard for a kid who would never grow up. A week after Andy’s birthday, Danny left a note and his bar of gold.

  
When he returned to Washington, Congress gave him a new room. One that he wasn’t allowed to leave for one month. And then he wasn’t allowed to leave the building for two months. The street block for three.

  
Danny didn’t let that get him down. He had been free, he had a family, he had kept the snakeskin boots, he had the pie recipe memorized, and he had kept Andy’s knife. He would never leave home without it.

  
The next 40 years seemed uneventful to him. Sure, industry was booming, cities were growing, and states were annexed, but compared to the 6 years in Texas it seemed as if nothing had changed for him. He met a few presidents, Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt were his favorites so far because they shook the ground they walked on and treated him more like a person than an object. Other than that, until the Great War, he kept to himself and studied the books he could get from the library.

  
The Great War. That really shook the ground. At the time, Danny was 14 and could only watch and hope as the United States entered the war. He helped the effort at home, now able to walk freely around the capital, he organized labor and gardens for women to support their soldiers overseas. At one point President Wilson asked him for advice, and Danny had never felt as special as that moment when they held a conversation in the White House office.

  
It was also around this time when he started hearing rumors about another like him, alive for longer and seemingly more important or something. But whenever and whomever he asked, they brushed it off as mere rumor.

  
After the Great War, the Great Depression was harsh. Danny, of course, had been sheltered through the worst, until Franklin D. Roosevelt made him realize just how bad the country was suffering. As the New Deal began, Danny made himself a deal. If he could help just one person every day, then he could go to bed happy. He helped plenty of people every day, by giving out his meals and working at the local soup kitchen and paying strangers to wax his shoes. By the Lord, he had shiny leather shoes for months.

  
But if the first was great, then the people will make a sequel, and it will surely suck. Bringing the country out of a depression was another war, being coined World War II. Danny was horrified, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese planes, and felt that neutrality wasn’t enough anymore. Only 15 years old, he couldn’t join the fight, but damn, if he didn’t make the best damn victory garden ever, he would never know who did.

  
Again, Danny heard rumors of the other one like him, and he had seemed to have joined the fight overseas in Europe. This time Danny got a name. Jones. But it was a slip, and the politician he had gotten it from quickly zipped his lips.

  
Through then on, through the end of the war, through the Cold war (he was now terrified of communists), and the next couple of presidents, Danny changed his game. FDR was a great inspiration, a man that Danny had confided in and had bonded with, in that they were both in some way trapped, whether by polio or law. If FDR could lead a country through the Depression and the War, then Danny could lead the capital. Well, sort of. Politicians never seemed to take him seriously.

  
Danny decided to be a leader differently. If he was a lap dog to Congress, then he would rather find a way to be involved in his community, the Washington that he has been with for decades. At this point, he was no longer sure if he was going to die, so he might as well use his time productively by being a good man in a good country.

  
He started by boosting the economy. By getting a job at a local coffee shop.

  
Of course, that was not all he did, he lead community events, personally supervised a local theater club, and worked at a homeless shelter, but he couldn’t help but love the aesthetic of a coffee shop. The place was warm, the employees knew him well, and the owner was a lovely woman breaking stereotypes by running a business that she was quite good at. Years later, after she found a husband, had a family, and grew into old age, he confided in her his secret that he was somewhat immortal. He was now 16, it was the start of the 1970s, and he felt that he needed a new face to open up to. In her will, she wrote that he could work for her family business as long as he wanted.

  
Come into the 1980s, Danny realized that he had forgotten something. The Jones guy that was supposedly like him. Now he had a purpose, since he was bored; find out more about this guy. He turned to books, searching through archives and letters, but the most he got in his search was a notice to Jones from some guy in Britain that he didn’t pay his tab and was an “arse” for leaving this guy the bill. Danny enjoyed reading that.

  
But he did find a book, just not what he was looking for. While meandering around a bookshop in downtown Washington, Danny came upon another piece of writing from some guy in Britain, but it seemed to be realistic fiction. A book, How to be an effective Capital by Landon (London) King. A book that Danny recognized himself in. This was the book that changed his life forever.


End file.
